Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

globalpolicyjournal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 170 posts

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#11

Post by jshen »

aussiesnack wrote: post #5
verdverm wrote: post #2

Didn't Europe cut down most of it's forests before capitalism had a name? Are communist systems much different in their treatment of nature? This seems to be a more general problem than something which is the result of capitalism

> This seems to be a more general problem than something which is the result of capitalism Sure, but the point is that dismantling of ecosystems is capitalism's central organising principle. It's what capitalism is : denote sophisticated evolved ecosystems as "property" rather than world, then allow the "owners" to dismantle them to create crude technological systems that require ongoing inputs from the outputs of pr…

I think you are conflating a few things. The idea of property came into existence long before capitalism, which seems to be the linchpin of your take. Are you suggesting we return to being hunter gatherers? If not, I’m not sure what you are proposing.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#12

Post by dbingham »

aussiesnack wrote: post #10
verdverm wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The earth and life have survived several cataclysmic events. Why would this time > end only with the death of the living planet Certainly the CO2 PPM will not cause this https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2021/02/15/co2-dip-dinosau... > Until about 215 million years ago, the Triassic period had experienced extremely high CO2 levels, at around 4,000 parts per million — about 10 times higher than today. But between 215…

Quoted post unavailable.

It is a bit of a semantic dispute, but not an unimportant one.

We are causing a major extinction event that is up there with the worst ones the Earth has experienced. That said, the end result is likely to be that we either go extinct or come very close and the remaining life on Earth picks up the pieces and starts re-evolving new biodiversity from the diversity bottleneck.

It's happened before and life on Earth, as whole, will come out the other side of this bottleneck and move on (unless we've tripped some unimaginable feedback loop).

...it's just likely we won't be included in that life.

...and a major extinction event on this scale is nothing to sneeze at either. Really it's chilling enough that we, as a species, are potentially having a similar impact on Earth's biodiversity as the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. There's really no need to exaggerate that.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#13

Post by Supermancho »

jshen wrote: post #11
aussiesnack wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems to be a more general problem than something which is the result of capitalism Sure, but the point is that dismantling of ecosystems is capitalism's central organising principle. It's what capitalism is : denote sophisticated evolved ecosystems as "property" rather than world, then allow the "owners" to dismantle them to create crude technological systems that require ongoing inputs from the outputs of pr…

I think you are conflating a few things. The idea of property came into existence long before capitalism, which seems to be the linchpin of your take. Are you suggesting we return to being hunter gatherers? If not, I’m not sure what you are proposing.

> The idea of property came into existence long before capitalism, which seems to be the linchpin of your take.

That is not what I understood. I understood a simplified definition of property under modern capitalism. Capitalist property value is overwhelmingly limited to physical utility and not to consequence of consumption. There are a few exceptions, in various countries and industry, notwithstanding.

I did not see a suggestion as to what to do about this.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#17

Post by happytoexplain »

LatteLazy wrote: post #7

Capitalism just values what people value. If nature is worth more as a tourist attraction than a farm, that is what it will be. I am not making excuses for capitalism here. I am just saying: you can either overthrow global capitalism and replace it with some new perfect system no one knows about yet OR we can start valuing different things as a society...

The problem is that capitalism naturally "takes advantage" of weaknesses in human decision-making, especially around being abstracted from consequences (by time, space, complex routing, etc etc), that even the very humans in question frequently agree should not be the way it works.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#18

Post by jay_kyburz »

dbingham wrote: post #12
aussiesnack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It is a bit of a semantic dispute, but not an unimportant one. We are causing a major extinction event that is up there with the worst ones the Earth has experienced. That said, the end result is likely to be that we either go extinct or come very close and the remaining life on Earth picks up the pieces and starts re-evolving new biodiversity from the diversity bottleneck. It's happened before and life on Earth, as…

I think we have the technology now (or in the next 100 years) to move some of our people into moon bases here on earth.

If I were Musk I would be building these now.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#19

Post by titzer »

Nah, capitalism is just the most efficient system for economic growth. It's economic growth that's driving climate change, and economic growth is driven by population growth, reduction in poverty, and the hedonistic treadmill. It doesn't matter what -ism you put on it, climate change is driven by burning fossil fuels and every -ism would do the same. Fossil fuels are a very decentralized incentive problem; they are everywhere, the externalities aren't felt locally, and not until much later. The consequences that would change behavior just aren't there, and consequences are the only thing that changes behavior.

Re: Climate Change Is the Product of How Capitalism “Values” Nature

#20

Post by verdverm »

dbingham wrote: post #12
aussiesnack wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It is a bit of a semantic dispute, but not an unimportant one. We are causing a major extinction event that is up there with the worst ones the Earth has experienced. That said, the end result is likely to be that we either go extinct or come very close and the remaining life on Earth picks up the pieces and starts re-evolving new biodiversity from the diversity bottleneck. It's happened before and life on Earth, as…

Unlike the other instances, we have the potential to reverse the trend. Blaming capitalism does not help, it's just how we organize economically, to which there is no known better alternative
Post reply on HN